‘Blind spots’ are a major obstacle to data protection

• Print

Details

Published: Wednesday, 09 August 2017 07:22

Gigamon Inc. has published the results of a commissioned survey, ‘Hide and Seek: Cybersecurity and the Cloud,’ conducted by Vanson Bourne. The survey polled information technology and security decision-makers in the UK about their cloud security preparedness, network visibility issues and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) readiness.

The results of the survey demonstrate that lack of visibility is leaving organizations struggling to identify network data and investigate suspicious network activity tied to malicious attacks. 61 percent of respondents cited network ‘blind spots’ as a major obstacle to effective data protection while 41 percent of those, who do not have complete visibility of their network, reported that they lacked sufficient information to identify threats.

The survey findings pinpoint three root causes of data blind spots:

• The increasing speed and growth of network traffic stresses monitoring and security tools, which are not adept at handling large amounts of traffic. 67 percent of respondents report that they have not scaled their monitoring and security infrastructure to meet the needs of increased data volume.
• High value information is being migrated to the cloud, where security is limited and application data is not easily accessible.  80 percent of respondents believe that cloud security is a concern holding their organization back from adopting the latest technologies. When asked what types of information they are moving to the cloud, 68 percent of respondents reported day-to-day work information and 39 percent cited critical and proprietary corporate information.
• A large amount of network data remains hidden due to data and tools still being segmented by organizational boundaries. IT and security decision-makers are not able to quickly identify and address threats and security events. 70 percent of respondents report that because different network data is being utilised between NetOps and SecOps teams, there is no consistent way of accessing it nor understanding it. 45 percent of respondents, who do not have complete visibility over their network, report they did not possess information on what is being encrypted in the network.

Network blind spots go hand-in-hand with the lack of readiness for GDPR

67 percent of respondents agree that lack of visibility over data makes GDPR difficult. 58 percent report they do not have a robust GDPR strategy in place with respondents stating that they have dedicated 20 percent of their IT budget, on average, for GDPR. The lack of GDPR readiness may be a cause for concern as the regulations come into effect May 2018 with heavy fines issued for non-compliance.